Remember the iconic 1951 Cold War era film, “The Day the Earth Stood Still”? It was a black and white film starring Michael Rennie as Klaatu, an alien who came to Earth to warn our warring nations that a galactic police force had deemed the world a “danger” to intelligent life everywhere and that we faced annihilation unless we acted nice. It was one of the classic, dystopian films with a utopian message. If only we could all just get along! Well, true to the axiom that there isn’t anything new in Hollywood, it is being remade as a Keanu Reeves vehicle (that’s Hollywood talk for “starring Keanu Reeves").

Now, the original film was all about love for your fellow man, ending war, planting daisies and a being nice little Earthling… or Klaatu and his trusty robot Gort will blow you up. As the Cold War was looming in the minds of the civilized nations and MAD* had set the table for “doomsday clocks” and backyard bomb shelters, the original “Day” was a timely, if not a bit hamhanded, epic with a message. The title character, Klaatu, when hiding as a human, even took the name “Mr. Carpenter” as an allegory to Christ. Naturally, the bad, bad humans martyred the kindly “Mr. Carpenter” in the end. It was all very much geared for its time.

Well, as mentioned, they are now about to remake “Day” and they have searched the world over for a new timely message to expound upon. Is it that we still have too many people on this planet living in poverty? Is it that we still lamentably have regimes that use force and tyranny against their people? Is it that war is still all too common? Could these things be why the new “Day” film will posit that a powerful alien race wants to just erase humanity like a bad virus?

Nah. As far as the new “Day” movie goes, these powerful aliens are mad at us not because we are mean to each other, not because we might then bring that meanness with us into outer space. No, the important message that the Keanu Klaatu wants to bring us, the message that will warn us of an apocalyptic impending alien police action is….

Global warming.

That’s right folks, apparently the new “Day” movie is positing that the worst thing man has done, the one thing that will make an alien race ponder our destruction, is that we caused global warming.

Why, exactly, any alien race would care that we are supposedly causing our own world to die is anybodies guess. At least in the original the alien's reason to consider destroying us all is because we might have infected their idyllic existence with our human pugnacity and violence. At least that is somewhat believable -- though, it always begged the question that if peace was their goal, why did the aliens have to do it at the point of a gun and threats of genocide, but whatever.

So, a little pollution, a casually tossed plastic bag, a smoke stack or two, that is enough to destroy the Earth and commit genocide for the alien race in this new version of “The Day the Earth Stood Still.”

Of course, since the movie is fantasy, it seems only fitting that the fantasy of man-made global warming is made out to be such a danger to the universe, isn’t it? It is also amusing that the globaloney crowd has now expanded the eeeevils of man’s destruction of the environment from just being a danger to the Earth to now being a danger to the entire Universe!

Yes, not only can man destroy the entire Earth by ignoring our “Carbon footprint,” now man is destroying the entire universe! Talk about a god complex! This movie has it going in spades.

What do you think? Oscar material?

Maybe if we just say "Klaatu barada nikto" it’ll all go away?

*MAD= Mutually Assured Destruction.

(Uncapie over at aintitcool.com saw a sneak peak at the working script. So, h/t to aintitcool.)

(Photo credit: Answers.com)